The online journal of a crusty, longwinded trial lawyer, bemused observer of politics, and internet dilettante

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Osama bin Laden's invitation to Pres. Kerry to negotiate a truce

O American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results....

Your security is not in the hands of [Democratic presidential candidate John F.] Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands, and each state that does not harm our security will remain safe.

So says Osama bin Laden to the American public. The very perceptive and eloquent Wretchard of Belmont Club has this to say about bin Laden's tape (boldface in original):

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

I agree. But I respectfully disagree, in part, with Wretchard that "[t]he American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day." Yes, if Pres. Bush is re-elected, bin Laden will have his answer. But I don't think that bin Laden's tape is primarily an attempt to influence the course of the American election next Tuesday. Rather, I think it's a very clear attempt to begin negotiations with a Kerry administration for a "cease-fire" in the Global War on Terror.

Of course, I don't believe for an instant that bin Laden's sincere. Only a blithering fool would trust him. But only a blithering fool would —

have listened to the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong's "seven-point peace plan" during the Vietnam War, and have taken it at face value and endorsed it as the course that America should follow.

have believed Daniel Ortega's promises to reform his communist government in Nicaragua if only America would stop funding the contras.

have believed that a nuclear freeze and sharp cutbacks in America's military and intellligence programs would placate the Soviet Union and win the Cold War.

have believed that diplomacy would have gotten Saddam out of Kuwait in the last decade, or out of power in his own country in this one.

believe that North Korea will respond more favorably to unilateral negotiations with the United States than to combined pressure in six-way talks that also involve South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia.

One such blithering fool may be elected President of the United States on Tuesday. And Osama bin Laden — like Madame Binh, Daniel Ortega, a succession of Soviet dictators, Saddam, and Kim Jong Il before him — has already begun his sly attempts to manipulate that candidate. So it is that this blithering fool's personal history of enthusiastically swallowing just this kind of bait, hook, line, and sinker — and then trying to base America's course upon it — scares me far more than anything Osama bin Laden could ever say.

Comments

OK, I admit to being a bit lazy here, but how do we know this tape is genuine? The speech doesn't sound much like OBL to me, having read his stuff from the early 90s to 2001. It doesn't sound very AQ either - it sounds American with the "Arab" touches a hack screenwriter would add. It's a long shot with a different background, no much at all [to me] like his last known real tapes. I wonder -- can you tell if the lip movement matched the words? Does it look reasonably like OBL 3 years on? Is this some Al Jazeera bit of foolery? Is there evidense of funny cuts or slicing at the frame level? Was it filmed in a Kinko's? The media have been duped so many times this year -- where's the proof?

You and I agree. InDC has the same take as do others. This doesn't even look like OBL incomparison to other tapes. Isn't it also convenient that he got the DNC talking points almost verbatim? Did you miss the end of the clip showing "a production of DNC/Moore Ent?"

I'm disappointed to see Bin Laden is still alive. However I noticed he was hiding his lower body. Usually he's been sitting in the Arab manner, on the floor, or walking around while displaying a weapon (dagger or rifle).

I suspect he has lost one or both legs.

As for an answer to him, "We will find you and you will die, Islamofascist!"

No one really knows what Kerry will do if elected. However, we do know that what he says is often confusing and opportunistic.

So I will speculate that since Kerry can't avoid making "mistakes,"...he will dilly and dally his way through the end of his term, avoiding decisions as much as possible, leading none, trying to make everyone happy, yet being mean-spirited and personally defensive, playing the victim, for the decisions that he is forced to make.

as to "leave us alone, we will leave you alone", it seems to me that UBL is as big a pandering liar as JF K. Does either of them think that any one but the LLL will believe this. I'm a voting for BUSH. Our troops haven't caught UBL yet, But I get some comfort thinking that UBL sleeps in 2 hour shifts with one eye open. KNOWING his time is short.

Many have commented that this video sounds more like a Western production than UBL's regular work. A lot of people think that he is in Iran. The Iranian Mullahs are more tuned in to influencing Western politics than is UBL.

After the presidential debates, Iran was much more favorable to the Kerry/Edwards position on nuclear material for Iran than they were previously. Kerry has been busy narrowing the War on Terror to those involved in Sept. 11, excluding from his rhetoric state sponsors of terrorism. Might the unusual style of this video be attributable to some coaching in Iran (not necessarily from the government)?

UBL must see a world of opportunities and perils in this election: Palestine without Arafat, the perceived opportunity to short-circuit the military campaign in Fallujah, the greater possibility of nukes for Iran with a Kerry presidency and the rhetoric by Kerry advisor Richard Holbrook about getting tough with Israel. How could UBL resist making a video?

p.s. I think the possibility that UBL was coached in Iran is greater than the possibility that Karl Rove put him up to it - Walter Cronkite's theory.
http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=4923

Bravo! Please allow me to add the following quote from the 9/30/04 presidential debate to your list:

LEHRER: "New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry. If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?"

KERRY: "Nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation..... Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense."

"You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "'You can't have nuclear weapons,'" but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using."

"Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation."

END OF QUOTE

The senator clearly makes no distinction between why it's good for the world for the US to have nuclear weaponry but not for Iran or North Korea to have it. Do we need further proof straight from the senator's mouth that the man is mired in moral equivalence and knee-jerk blame-America-first reactions to all the ills of the world? The outrageous moral equivalence on naked display in the senator's statement above as well as in your list is nothing new. It has been alive and well since he slapped the Genghis Khan epithet on our troops in 1971. It is a sad commentary on our present-day values and sense of honor (the lack thereof, I mean) that this sorry specimen is even in the Senate, let alone a presidential race. I hope and pray that enough Americans see through Kerry's masquerade and resoundingly repudiate him, an action that sadly has been overdue since he won his first campaign for public office. As they say, better late than never.

This is possible. The rumor is that UBL has kidney disease and there are some specific side-effects of kidney disease. One of them is an early form of osteoporosis where the unfiltered phosporous, an element the damaged kidneys have difficulty in removing, end up binding with the calcium in the bones and greatly weakening them. In advanced enough cases the bones lose almost all their calcium and become extremely brittle. In an x-ray a healthy bone will look an opaque white while a bone with kidney failure induced osteo will look largely transparent.

Another side-effect of kidney disease is poor circulation. This can result in the blockage of certain blood vessels or a reduction in the volume of blood flowing to extremities. This can result in blood clots, necrosis, gangrene and eventually amputation.

A really bad combination is diabetes and kidney disease. Both had poor blood circulation as side-effects and the combination will almost certainly result in amputations.

Just an fyi. This of course supposes that UBL couldn't get a transplant. *shrug* frankly I thought he was dead.

"Democrat, Republican, there's no such thing," Kerry said. "There's just America and we are all united in hunting down and capturing or killing those who conducted that raid and we always knew that that was Osama bin Laden."

"Those who conducted that raid." So although we always "knew" it was Usama, Kerry's limited the WOT to those individuals who're already dead; those who conducted that raid. There may be a couple individuals involved in that raid that haven't been captured (or known of). Usama can turn them over and they'd be dealt with. If Beldar's correct, that's Kerry's counter-offer.

I'd add what any lawyer knows: that Usama can't be convicted on the evidence, possibly not even in American courts. Between these two legalities, alQada as a network of devoted to a particular 'cause' may get a total pass from Kerry.

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